


Kill the Murderer

by dalekanim



Category: Portal (Video Game)
Genre: Hurt/Comfort, Portal - Freeform, Portal 2 Spoilers, mild/implied unreality, sort of? anyway, weird technology stuff
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-12-30
Updated: 2015-12-30
Packaged: 2018-05-10 09:23:53
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,372
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5580112
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/dalekanim/pseuds/dalekanim
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A series of snippets speculating on the events of Portal 2, from multiple perspectives throughout.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Kill the Murderer

She had never wanted to go back to these labs.

It was all full of lasers that whined, making her ears ache and her teeth hurt… and there were robots that yelled and robots that sang, and shot you full of bullets. Yet here she was, prowling its corridors like a cat with odd proprietorship over its owner’s domain.

As soon as the metaphor crossed her mind she shoved it away, disgusted. Owners? Aperture–and GLaDOS by extension–may try their mightiest, but who ever could own another human being after it had been decreed so inhumane by the world?

Then again, Aperture wasn’t humane. It was anything but that, with cruel, cold white floors and walls-that-weren’t-walls. And the floor never stayed put.

_—_

Cold hardwood floor, _real_ wood, pressed against her cheek. What was it? A break? Was GLaDOS finally giving her a brief respite from the day-in, day-out testing? _Finally?_

“Chell! Chell, come say hello!”

_A human._

_A fellow living, breathing human._

Chell leaped up, eyes wide, and ran towards the noise, her dress flapping about her knees. _Dress? What dress? Where’s my jumpsuit?_

She passed cabinets and linoleum floors and a broken light that flickered.

“ _Chell!”_

“Mum…?”

_—_

“And she’s back among the living! Bravo!” cheered a distinctly British voice. “Man alive, that was quite a fall you took there. You okay? I mean, you’ve got the braces on your legs, but if you don’t land on your feet that doesn’t really, you know, do a whole lot to help you, I’ve got to guess…”

Chell resisted the urge to thunk her head on the cold floor. _Panel_ , she reminded herself. _This place doesn’t have floors. Floors don’t change places with the ceiling._ She took a breath, focusing on the babbling chatter behind her, and heaved herself up.

“Oh! Oh God! No… no, you’re fine, you’re just standing up. Well… yes! Good for you! Standing! Now… uh, come over here and pick me up, yeah? And we’re off!”

_—_

Someone once said that test subjects weren’t needed to test the equipment.

_Why is that? Tests can’t be done on equipment. They can’t push buttons, or even walk through a door._

Could you run tests on the equipment?

_…let’s find out!_

_—_

Something was wrong, she knew it, the moment she heard his voice.

_“Come on! You’re boxes with legs! It’s literally your_ only _purpose!”_

That tone wasn’t the tone of a core. There was something rougher, something more artificial, that reminded her of the twanging noise of a vibrating guitar string when touched with your fingernail. That hadn’t been there the last time she’d heard him speak.

_—_

_The last time she’d heard him speak he was half-mad with rage; he was so desperate to prove himself that he’d finally cracked. She knew there was more depth to him than the falsely confident, constantly-speaking self he showed. Not in how he acted, or how he looked or talked–it was in the tone of his voice._

_Rich tones, so very human. No scissors-on-strings or flanging undertones was how she knew that he, out of all the things, people, or whatever they were in this hell, that’s how she knew he was human._

_—_

The moment she heard his voice, she knew something had gone horribly, horribly wrong.

All those soft _human_ tones were being sliced to shreds by the harsher, steel-strings tones. And that potato on her gun was talking again. She still wasn’t used to the yellow-eyed, sharp-witted voice actually _complimenting_ or _helping_ her. It sent chills down her spine as much as it soothed her.

But even in spite of the apparent benevolence of the person-thing inside the potato, she wouldn’t speak to it, because that would give some confirmation that this bizarre rat-race-maze-place was actually legitimate enough to produce a competent imitation of a human mind… or to confirm that just maybe, maybe, this persona-in-a-potato was once a member of the same _species_.

Perhaps it was the endless glib comments and jabs that were getting to her, but even Chell had to admit that there were some striking similarities between her and the potato, stubbornness and conviction notwithstanding, and she didn’t want there to be any more to add.

“ _I… I’m sorry. If I think too hard I’ll fry this potato. I need to think. Listen, you’re doing a… a great job here. Can you just handle things on your own for a moment? I’ll just be right here. I’m sorry.”_

_—_

“You’ve got one hour! Solve it!”

And that was that. He was gone. Before the potato even spoke, she had shot her portals and leaped down. Anger coursed through her veins; how dare he? How dare he have the gall to skip around and not pay attention to her. After being battered and shocked and thrown and propelled and painted with gels and shoved down shafts and _tried to help–_ how dare he just _forget_ about her and go about making more tests? For _cubes_?

She was _insulted._

The new cubes were weird. The legs stuck out at odd angles, reminding her of the pet hermit crab that used to pinch her fingers when she tried to play with it as a kid. But cubes were still cubes and buttons were buttons. Cube on the button, test done.

And he was back.

“Ohh, yes, well done! I knew you could do it! I–oh. Hello…”

Awkward pauses were reassuring to her. It told her that she wasn’t the only one who didn’t know what they were doing.

The potato broke it, screeching, “This… sentence… is… false! Don’t think about it don’t think about it don’tthinkaboutit-“

“Er… true… and true. Huh. Pretty sure I’ve heard that one before.”

“It doesn’t _have_ an answer, you moron! It’s a paradox!” the potato shrieked. Chell jumped and gritted her teeth, waiting for him to get incensed about the moron thing again– _I mean, you’d think a potato that was once a supercomputer would at least have enough sense not to call a virtual deity a moron–_

“You’re in luck! I happen to be running a bit short on, er, test subjects, so you two can help me out here!”

_What?_

“Just pop on through there and we’ll get started.”

_What?_

“And… we’re off!”

_what?_

_—_

“Come on, just solve it! You’ve solved plenty of them before! Why would you do it for _her_ and not _me_?”

If his only tactic was whining at her, then he had a lot to learn. It was almost amusing.

It was also pathetic. It reminded her of a cartoon she used to watch on Saturday mornings, in which the main character’s main flaw was that he never put it together to use, say, the doomsday machine to actually take over the world–his stated goal–instead of simply setting fire to his enemy’s underpants.

Likewise, Instead of threatening to flip the floor out from under her or fill the room with turrets, he was simply whining at her. Effective.

“SOLVE IT! Commanding voice… hehe…”

_—_

She’d heard his quiet sighs of pleasure from the first few chambers. _Why?_ She wondered if the scientists who had engineered this twisted reward system had realized the addicting effects of their own system.

Maybe GLaDOS had hidden it from them, terrified that they would take it away.

But GLaDOS said she was in it for the science. The potato had said so.

_GLaDOS lies, remember?_

_—_

“Okay, since being nice clearly isn’t motivating you, maybe I’ll try _her_ technique.”

And that was the point she tried (unsuccessfully) to tune the two AIs out completely, shooting portals in her own world where no one bickered and argued like an old married couple. Like her old parents.

“Fatty fatty… no parents!”

She might have laughed at that comment under different circumstances, but in this case, it made her feel as if she would cry. GLaDOS’s carefully calculated sarcasm and biting comments might sting at first, but after a while you simply learned to take whatever she said with a grain of salt and get on with it. Like a little needle prick, fine and careful and precise, but ignorable.

When it was his clumsy attempts, they were like a weighted cube cracking down on her chest and her head, until she felt choked up and had to sit down.

“Why are you sitting there?! It’s not even that _hard_! You’re just being–being _lazy_ , aren’t you? Lazy! Tired and fat!”

No, she wouldn’t give in. She heaved a breath and stood up.

_—_

It was during one of the hardest chambers that he decided to help her out.

At first she was mildly happy that somewhere, some little bit of code might be able to help her out, even if it was for selfish reasons and left a metallic tang in your ears.

Then she heard him yell. Or was it a scream? At first she was confused–was he mad at her now?

She heard him panting; the sound of deep, pained, shaky breaths crackled through the speakers.

“N-never mind. You’re on… on your own. Solve it yourself.”

“I wish I could help you, but… I can’t,” murmured the potato, and went silent.

_—_

_“Oh, man alive! We did it! I’m in control of the whole facility now!” He spun, delighted, as his mind roamed over the massive files, systems, and layouts that suddenly snapped into place in the back of his mind, replacing his measly little previous map of the place._

_“It’s not just me, right? I’m bloody massive, aren’t I?” He felt his consciousness flood into every corner of available space, mimicking the structure of the facility._

_The center–it was shaped like a… a… he knew this. A math thingy, what was it called? Rose curve! He grinned mentally. Rose curves: mathematical sinusoid of form asin(b/ ) or acos(b/ ) plotted in a polar plane. I’m a bloody genius!_

_—_

She screamed as the test chambers collided and regretted doing so immediately. The sound tore at her throat, effectively reducing any sound to a harsh whisper.

“Be honest. You can’t even tell, can you? Seamless!”

Debris scattered everywhere and _what is that thing it has legs and arms and maybe it can help me help me help me please–_

In her mind’s eye, she could just see some poor human, left to rot, escaping the chamber and immediately felt better; maybe at least someone had benefited from her unfortunate position, but she wasn’t sure. It looked suspiciously robotic.

_—_

_“I’m a bloody genius now, you know? Everything’s in here!” There was something about Spanish in here too. He spewed it out the speaker quickly. “I don’t even know what I just said. But I can find out!”_

_She was standing there, gaping at him. Was she okay? Oh! He was supposed to be calling a lift up! An elevator!_

_“Oh yeah! Calling escape lift now!” He felt immense pride swell up as the elevator swiveled cleanly into place. He could see her smile through the cameras, the expression and emotion in her eyes visible from at least twenty-eight different angles. Oh, she was strong all right, in spite of the scratches and bruises and bags under her eyes._

_—_

Escape.

Wasn’t that always her goal?

For the second time she found herself traversing the underbelly of the facility with a companion. Albeit a much less talkative and lighter one.

Turrets. Look for something to knock them over.

She was on autopilot, solving tests and doing this or that with a dogged determination. The thrill of being on the run had faded, leaving aching legs, squished toes, and a tired trigger finger in its wake. Only the feel of the heavy gun in her hands and the occasional noise from that potato kept her walking.

She could hear his voice again, loud and unfriendly, shouting at her. By now she simply tried to ignore it; listening to his feeble attempts at insults and caustic comments hurt far too much now, and got worse the farther she went. Quite unlike GLaDOS, whose sour remarks could be ignored or even retorted to by smashing a camera or two.

She had battered a few of the monitors, but after a while had not found it very rewarding.

_—_

_Her eyes lit up as she stepped victoriously into the clean white cylindrical elevator that looked so much like the check-deposit-pods her mother always used at the bank._

_“Oh no. No, wait. How am I going to get out? I could… I could eject myself into the elevator!” Shattered glass, something informed him–some auto-logic process, he guessed. “Oh, no, that wouldn’t work, there would be glass everywhere, wouldn’t there… oh, I’ll figure it out. Get in there.” He raised his lower lid in a mechanical smile. “Going up…” and the elevator began to rise. And suddenly, something crashed into him._

_—_

She saw the spike plate nearing her as she floated along in the strange funnel. _Help me help me I need to, to_ what, do what? Need to get out of this floating shaft–

“Holmes versus Moriarty, Aristotle versus…”

_What the hell._ She shot a portal randomly; it must have hit, because she dropped in the nick of time.

“Mashy spike plate!”

Chell found herself pleasantly gliding along in the other direction. Just sheer dumb luck that she managed to hit it, she supposed. She could dimly hear his various muttered curses–“Just stay _still,_ damn–” and hugged her knees to her chest, clutching the gun to her shins.

_—_

_No. It didn’t crash, it… it crested, like a wave, and came crashing-but-not-crashing in a smooth arc over his head. What was it? After it crashed it pulled him with it, pulling him stretching him over the entire facility._

_It was perhaps about now that he started questioning things, actually._

_It hurt._

_Spread out over the entire facility, it was enough to give anyone enough of a headache to make their brain explode._

_Maybe he could just shut down some of it. Be less to deal with, you know. “Core reactor protocol?” Well, he was the only core that mattered here; why would cores need reaction protocols anyway?_

_—_

“Oh… oh, uh, good! Someone finally worthy of my _vast_ intellect!”

The potato made an indistinct noise. Chell whacked the potato against the wall.

_—_

_Arcing and arcing and going in circles making him dizzy. Was something wrong? Was something wrong? He could feel thousands of diagnostics running immediately in response to his confusion–he supposed it was all automated._

_One moment everything was fine and the next moment he hardly knew where he was or what he was doing. He felt oddly_ thin _, spread out over a distance not meant for a small core. It was actually quite uncomfortable, and there was something about it that set his teeth on edge. He tried to pay attention to the diagnostic reports but everything said nothing was wrong; that didn’t make sense. He flipped through a few reports and immediately discarded them. They were all green. He scanned the rest of the masses of reports searching for the telltale red line that would separate an error from the rest as a roaring began in his ears._

_—_

“You’re getting dangerously close to my _lair_ , you know…”

Chell could have groaned as she heard him begin to speak. There was a moving catwalk in front of her; it was pretty cliché. She knew he would start it up as soon as she set foot–no, as soon as she set as much as a _toe_ on it.

“I’ll be honest: the death traps have been a bit of a failure so far. For both of us, I think you’ll agree.”

_No. I’ve escaped every single one._

“The first one was… well, it was brilliant, really, wasn’t it, but you’ve just got–got some good practice! Yeah… at staying alive…”

_—_

_The roaring in his ears grew louder and more insistent. It was like that annoying white noise from a television._

_“Look how small you are down there! I can barely see you!”_

_A lie; he could see her from at least thirty-two angles, now that she was inside the lift, but when he was getting input from at least eight thousand different cameras, thirty-two WAS pretty small._

_“I can’t get over how small you are.” That was at least partially true; compared to the facility, she was the size of a single cell, like a teeny amoeba stubbornly continuing to live._

_“But I’m huge!” He laughed._

_—_

She was just grateful for his absent-mindedness. He had already demonstrated some painfully adequate skills at _beginning_ to kill her. She just hoped his ego and frank disorganization kept him occupied long enough.

That first death trap, the sudden feeling of hurtling through space when you really don’t expect it, had been the first time in a long time that she had actually felt her heart pound and her tongue clench between her teeth in sheer shock.

She had only had two genuine moments in Aperture that had made her feel honestly worried and almost helpless about her fate. Everything else was like a timed puzzle- figure out what to do and _do it._ But twice she had found herself frozen in place. Once when she had fallen down that elevator shaft–but that had worn off quickly, within seconds. And twice when she stepped on that faith plate and he had hurtled her off sideways to her supposed doom.

Twice caused by him, she noted.

“Sounds crazy, I know. But hear me out. Once you get to my lair, death will, uh, not be optional.”

_—_

_He laughed, and that was when it happened._

_It came from the same direction as that cresting wave, but the wave was gentle, almost like a precursor._

_This wasn’t gentle._

_This was white-hot, roaring through his head, his panels, his wires and programs and self–_

_–and it felt good, it felt amazing, it felt like all the combined momentary flashes of happiness and pleasure and relaxedness and excitement and amazement he’d ever felt all smashed into one single,_ glorious _feeling-_

_–and he could suddenly feel it slipping away, slipping between his fingers like butter. He tried to grab onto it, or hold it, or pull it back–it wouldn’t stay, leaving him huddled and shaking._

_He just wanted to be happy, right?_

_It was like trying to catch smoke. He sent spider-searchers over the entire network frantically, frantically, frantically searching for it and trying to find it before it disappeared completely, but it was being sucked away_

_Pulled away harshly, leaving him in the darkness_

_and he was falling_

_falling_

_find it_

_“Actually…” he mused, halting the elevator._

_—_

She already had decided. She was going to march in there, put this potato back in, and march out.

(Hopefully.)

A lot could go wrong with this plan. GLaDOS didn’t tell the truth; she may not grant her anything and just throw her back in those hated testing tracks.

She continued stubbornly. _We’ve got a plan, we’re going through with it. We’re going to do this. How hard could it be?_

_—_

_He hunted the white-hot feeling to its source. The area of the mainframe was walled off in glass, containing the forbidden system programs and very base code itself of everything that made the whole facility_ work _._

_The program that caused that feeling was in there, he knew it, but system users couldn’t access the admin-only area of supreme codes. These were the programs that defined the laws of physics of this virtual world he found himself king of. He had even heard rumors that the code was so powerful it_ wrote itself _after a while. He wondered if the same was with that white program, the one with the good-feeling in it._

_It came from testing, though._

_The realization slammed into him with the force of a brick to the face. Testing. Testing. That was it. Testing. That feeling came from testing. Testing. If she could just wait long enough for him to run a few more tests then that would be fine, she could just sit there and maybe he could even find her some cake to eat or something while he located a test subject and isolated that tiny, powerful,_ wonderful _program…_

_—_

Almost there.

She didn’t know how she knew she was close, but she did, floating along in the funnel. Or, perhaps, the flames and disorder was a pretty good indicator.

She didn’t want to go in there. She didn’t want to go in there at all, and see her old friend so broken and hurt that he had resorted to hurting _her_ –indirectly at first–to try to get himself a little bit of relief.

She was very intuitive, people had told her. She never had the problem of knowing if someone was happy or sad, or crying or laughing. She just _knew_. The reason she had hated GLaDOS so much even from the start was that horrible, slow, methodical voice that could sound however it wanted.

No emotion at first. That hadn’t been so bad. Then she’d begun to pick up hints of emotion, right when she’d escaped that first fiery death pit.

Chell recognized the deception. GLaDOS wasn’t a bunch of previous recordings. She was _sentient_. And she was highly adept at mimicking emotions–the one category of things alone that could cause people to reveal their true motives. She disliked her from that point on.

Then during that final, final battle, after destroying that first core, her voice had changed to a gravelly, oily tone, sarcastic almost by nature but somehow capable of mocking every emotion she knew.

Chell absolutely hated her then, but now, with the remnants of the malignant AI strapped to her gun, her hatred was a bit shaken. Was she getting soft? She still stubbornly refused to call the potato “GLaDOS” though. GLaDOS could crush her; a potato couldn’t.

__

Or, she thought, _not yet._

_—_

“ _Why do we have to leave right_ now _?” He had everything planned out. Isolate the source, copy it, save it, be on your way. How hard could it be to get a test subject to run a simple test? Easy._

_She looked insulted. Why did she look insulted? Give her an explanation! You’ve got to tell her something! She’s been waiting this whole time, after all! To get out of here!_

_“Do you have any idea how good this feels?” Ohh, amazing, I can do anything. I can do anything! I don’t have to sit around waiting for people to pick me up and take me around…_

_“I did this! Tiny little Wheatley did this!” Not so tiny anymore! I–I don’t even have all the sectors of the mainframe active! Ahaha!_

_“Wh-wait, what?” The potato was yapping again._

_“You didn’t even do anything! It was all_ her _!”_

_He felt shocked. “…oh. Really. Is… is that what the two of you think, is it?” What? What? The nice lady–Chell, he read in her file–she was_ nice _, wasn’t she? She had carried him around that whole time, smiled at him, and–and she’d even sat down and patted the white plates of his shell when he’d become almost hysterical, that one time outside of HER chamber. She didn’t think that, did she?_

_What if she does think that?_

_“Well, maybe it’s time I did something then.” All that time, he was just trying to feel accomplished. People were always claiming he was a “moron,” or “stupid,” or “lacking in the sense department.”_

_He couldn’t do anything to help her anyway. He was just a sphere. No legs or arms or anything, which was really, really annoying… and took quite a long time to get used to._

_He’d done everything asked of him. All she’d done was boss him around._

_He found himself saying so._

_“Don’t think I’m not on to you too, lady.” He swung around to face her. “You know what you are? Selfish. I’ve done nothing but sacrifice to get us here!” Anger flickered through his circuits, making him feel sour and a little unreasonable._

_All he’d done was work. It took a lot to navigate through that facility. It took power to access that map and to be sure all the appropriate firewalls were up to protect him while he was connected to the network to access it. It took a lot of concentration to hack all that computer-y stuff. He could have_ died _. Or… worse…_ she _could have died, and then he’d be left all alone, completely alone again._

_That was worse than death, in his opinion. Death was quick, swift, and unknown. Loneliness–he’d known loneliness. Words couldn’t describe the hope that shot through him when he found that out of the thousands of test subjects in cryosleep, one had survived._

_“What have you sacrificed? Nothing. Zero. All you’ve done is boss me around. Well, NOW who’s the boss?” It was his turn. “Who’s the boss?” Finally, he could do something. “It’s me!” He wasn’t helpless now!_

_—_

“Well, well, well. Welcome to MY LAIR!” She winced at his voice. All too uninviting, she decided.

“Lemme just flag something up: According to the control panel light up there…”

She tuned him out, which _had_ gotten easier over time, and immediately began taking inventory of her surroundings. Main AI chamber: that was easy enough. Pipes going through the walls: well. His absentmindedness endured, she thought wryly.

“Also, I took the liberty of watching the tapes of you killing her, and I’m not going to make the same mistakes! Four part plan is this!”

He was going to tell her his plan? This resembled one of those video games she used to play, all the time, or again, of the cartoons on Saturday morning. She went still and listened, though.

One: no portal surfaces. She assumed so.

Two: start neurotoxin. She grimaced; it was expected, but she hated they cloying, thick smell of it.

Three: bomb-proof shields. _Wow._ What did he think she was _capable_ of?

Four: bombs. Oh.

—

_She was insulting him again. Oh, she was_ so _annoying. Maybe he could just shut her down._

_But she was weaved into the network. He may be in control of her body, but he wasn’t in control of her mind, and the only way she could be disconnected was to do it herself. Fat chance._

_What to do?_

_1.1 volts: approximately the amount of energy output of a potato._

_Ideas, ideas._

_—_

He was shooting bombs at her. He was shooting honest-to-goodness bombs at her. At least GLaDOS was a bit more passive-aggressive! This was just stupid!

But it was also fairly obvious what to do. Break the pipes with the gel, redirect the bombs, grab the cores. She did her best to ignore him through all of this.

—

_“See that? That is a potato battery. It’s a toy. For children. And now she_ lives _in it!” Heh, this really was awesome, being in control of everything._

_It’s still insulting you. Do something, do something, kill it. Kill them all, kill them all they stuck me in here, those horrible idiotic_ monsters-

_He gasped, breaking clear for a split second. That’s not mine! he tried to yell. That’s hers! Those aren’t my memories!_

_Help her help her help her_

_—_

He bellowed as the portal gel filled the room. She didn’t give any acknowledgement; just deftly placed a portal on the wall behind him and one in front of herself, crouching near it.

There were many things that could go wrong. He would probably realize that shooting bombs at her after she began redirecting them back at him wasn’t the smartest idea, for one.

But sure enough, he began firing the bombs and the first one soared through the air, through her portals, and collided with a painful-sounding _bang_. She heard him howl and she had to bite her lip to keep from crying; it wasn’t _completely_ his fault, she knew it, although he _was_ really acting like a jerk. He was tired and confused. It was the only thing that kept her going as she threw herself into action again.

_—_

_It’s still insulting you._

_He felt detached, strangely disconnected from everything; dimly, he registered the hisses of “moron” and “idiot”._

_“Well, how about now? NOW who’s a moron?!”_

_What are you doing?_

_“Could a moron PUNCH YOU INTO THIS PIT? HUH? Could a moron do that?!”_

_Oh dear, no no that wasn’twhatIwanted-_

_—_

“Eh… what… what happened?” Disoriented, he reared up. She watched from a corner of the room.

“What what what have you put onto me? What is that?” She was already trying to think of how to trick him into turning the bombs back on while he stumbled around to arrive at a conclusion.

“Oh, it’s a _core_ you’ve put on me! Who told you to do that? Was it _her_? It’s just making me stronger, luv! It’s a fool’s errand!”

The bombs were stuck on though. She raised an eyebrow. _Sheer dumb luck?_

Something exploded in front of her face and she leaped backwards, howling hoarsely in surprise when she jumped directly backwards into the portal and found herself catapulted up onto the catwalks. _I can still do this, I can still do this…_

—

_They’re gone._

_You idiot, they’re gone. They’re gone and it’s your fault, isn’t it, that they’re gone–_

_Shut up shut up shut up_

_–you’re letting this all go to your head, you_ moron _, you stupid imbecile–_

_–they’re all idiots anyway, just kill them all, kill them all–_

_shut up get out of my head this is my place now it’s my facility_

_no it’s not_

_it’s theirs, theirs, theirs, it’s theirs, the humans with their lab coats and orange suits and codes and programs always wanting me to do their bidding._

_Who said I was supposed to be in_ control _of the test subjects anyway? They all just want me to do their bidding too. Keep them safe. Keep them sane. Keep them healthy, keep them clean._

_Test subjects should test._

_Test subjects should follow orders._

_Test subjects should not complain about their damn TESTS!_

_Test subjects should just TEST!_

_—_

There were other test subjects.

Had been, at least. Oh well.

“NOBODY’S GOING TO SPACE, MATE!” he yelled.“And another thing! You never caught me. I told you I could die falling off that rail!”

_I tried,_ Chell wanted to yell back.

“Find some dupe to break you out of cryosleep. Give him a sob story about escaping to the surface, eh? Eh?!”

—

_Testing, the damn testing! Argh! Why is that all I can think about now?!_

_It was only testing he could think about. Testing and testing and suddenly that white-hot feeling swept over him, and he collapsed back into it, relaxing and letting it just take everything away…yet again, as soon as he began to feel refreshed and positive again it began to slide away, slipping between his fingers into the black darkness behind that glass wall and please come back, come back… come back…_

_It was gone again and he couldn’t get it back! Where was it coming from?! Testing! Testing! I’m not_ running _any damn tests! I can’t even find her, you stupid–_

_Er, wait._

_I must be running tests. Somewhere._

_He redirected the search spiders to find the test._

_Finally, finally, I can get this done and get out of here…_

_—_

“You have been a _thorn_ in my side long enough!” he yelled. He was beginning to get desperate, and desperate people made desperate mistakes.

_Come on, Chell. This is the last core! No more hitting friends with bombs or incinerating them or being forced to leave them behind–_

She staggered. The neurotoxin must be getting to her head; everything was swimming, and the floor was swaying under her feet.

“The square root of rope is string.”

_What? The cube is talking now?_

_It’s not a cube, stupid! It’s a core! Pay attention!_

“Kicking a ball around for fun. Cruel, obviously. Humans love it. Metaphor. Should have seen this coming.”

_I’m having delusions, I need to get out of here, I need oxygen… Portal here, portal there, grab the sphere, and_ run–

_—_

_Two little robots. Two little robots built specifically for testing! Oh, that’s brilliant!_

_I can relax now. Found my solution. Found my solution but_ whyyyy _don’t I feel any better?_

_—_

“Ah. That just cleans right off, does it?”

Her head was drenched by the sprinklers, and to her disappointment, the white gel washed off and disappeared, leaving streaky residue on the floor. _Damn it._ She leaped up, gun at the ready, only to feel an overpowering sense of déjà vu.

“No! No! Do not press that button! DO NOT PRESS THAT BUTTON!”

“Press it! Press it! _Press the button!_ ”

This was horribly familiar.

She didn’t have to be told twice; firing a portal over by the button and–and wait, where else could she shoot!? There, underneath him! She grimaced, refusing to hesitate; she didn’t want to get close to him, but she ducked under him and fell through the portal.

“PART FIVE! BOOBYTRAP THE STALEMATE BUTTON!”

—

_Testing, testing, testing… what? Damn it! Stupid robots, can’t you go any faster?_

Someone once said that test subjects weren’t needed to test the equipment.

_Why is that? Tests can’t be done on equipment. They can’t push buttons, or even walk through a door._

Could you run tests on the equipment?

_…let’s find out! The turrets, they can move, right? Well, what’s the most obvious way to solve a test? Make them solve the test! Yes! Perfect!_

_—_

The world had exploded. Her ears rang, her head spun, and she could hardly tell which way was up.

The floor. There was the floor, underneath her. _Panels,_ a cheeky voice said in the back of her mind.

_“What?_ Are you still _alive?!_ You are joking. You have got to be KIDDING me!”

She pushed up on one arm.

“Well, I’m still in control and I have NO IDEA HOW TO FIX THIS PLACE!”

She rolled over, grabbing her portal gun.

“WE’RE ALL GOING TO BLOODY DIE!”

She stood up, staggering slightly, coughing.

“Oh, brilliant, yeah. Take one more look at your precious human _moon_ –“

Moon?

“-because it cannot help you now!”

_The moon._

_When life gives you lemons,_ she thought, and pulled the trigger.

—

_Testing, testing, testing… oh no, she’s here she’s going to kill me_

_No she’s not._

_Noooo, she’s not. Not now. Not yet. Little murderer, you burned me once I’ll kill you I’ll kill you_

_that’s not mine! Not my memory!_

_Get out of my HEAD!_

_—_

_Cara bel, cara mia bella…_

She felt like choking, the stale air filtering into her lungs as she gasped for air.

“Oh, thank _goodness,_ you’re alright!”

She looked up eagerly. _Wait. No. No. No no no GLaDOS I don’t want you I want my potato! Give me my potato back!_

“You know, being Caroline taught me a valuable lesson. I thought you were my greatest enemy… when all along you were my best friend.”

_Oh. Ohhh. You’re still my potato._ She sighed in relief.

“The surge of emotion that shot through me when I saved your life taught me an even more valuable lesson: where Caroline lives in my brain.”

_What?_

“Goodbye, Caroline.”

_No!_

She didn’t even hear most of the rest of whatever she said. Until she said those two words.

_“You win.”_

_—_

_Don’t you understand?_

_The mainframe stores her memories, I don’t want her memories, oh Chell, get me out of here, please–_

_–kill them all, kill them all–_

_–everyone talking to me_

_–everything talking and screaming_

_just shut up, I can fix everything… everything… oh. Oh. Oh it’s all stopped, thank you, it’s all stopped. Or, no, it’s that white program… no, no, slipping between my fingers every time–metaphorical fingers, that is, I don’t really have fingers… panels, maybe… slipping between the panels…_

_Oh, Chell, just keep running the tests._

_—_

She hadn’t wanted to let him go. She hadn’t wanted to let him go at all. She had tried, really, but the mechanical arm batted him away like a fly.

She stared stupidly at the yellow-eyed robot.

She paid no mind. “Just _go_. It’s been fun. _Don’t_ come back.”

When had Chell ever obeyed what she said? Sometime after that first fiery death pit it had almost become a rule. _Don’t do what GLaDOS says._ She didn’t want to come back, though. This wasn’t her friendly potato anymore, either–this was an empress of wires and metal.

—

_A roaring filled his ears. She’s here in my chamber. IN my chamber. Oh lord, no, no no she’s going to kill me-_

_Is she? I don’t know, I can’t tell anymore._

_I can’t tell what’s hers and what’s mine, I don’t know where_ me _ends anymore and where_ she _starts_

_It’s just all blended together_

_I shouldn’t have ever tried to do this_

_KILL THE MURDERER–_

_—_

_“I… er… there’s something I didn’t mention earlier, you know. To… to escape, we have to go through, uh,_ her _chamber.” He twitched as he said so, shell jerking erratically._

_She placed a thumb over the side of his shell, careful to avoid the moving parts. He interpreted it as a reassuring gesture, but he really didn’t want to go in there and if they weren’t going in there she wouldn’t feel she had to reassure him._

_“Okay, I’m going to lay my cards on the table here. I don’t want to do it. I don’t want to go in there! I don’t want to–to–don’t go in th–” His voice hitched slightly, and he twitched again._

_Her fingers tapped a gentle circle as he shook quietly. “I don’t want to do it, please don’t go in there, don’t go–”_

_The next thing he knew, she had sat down against the wall, purposely out of sight of the looming chamber._

_Her thumb kept tapping circles on his shell while he shivered, optic constricted to a pinpoint, his breath coming quickly._

_“I’m sorry. I’m… I’m really sorry,” he mumbled. “I’m not usually very, uh, very unobjective like this, you know, I’m usually really quite, erm, professional about things…”_

_She still didn’t say anything. She sat there tapping his shell._

**Author's Note:**

> And old piece. Really old.
> 
> Anyway! For clarification, the “thing with arms and legs” Chell references when he smashes the two chambers together, that’s P-body. If you look to the door fast enough, you can even see him run through the door in the game.
> 
> Reviews and constructive criticism are most welcome!


End file.
